


You Can Run,

by HenryMercury



Category: The Wicked + The Divine
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, High School, This is so fucking self-indulgent, athletics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 09:46:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7839958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura saw her first at the high jump.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can Run,

**Author's Note:**

> Self-indulgent sporting AU for my fav self-indulgent OTP from what is a pretty indulgent series in the first place. Started jotting this down before the Olympics came around, came back to cap it off just as they've ended. If you can believe it, proximity to the Games was coincidental.

Laura saw her first at the high jump. It was one of the opening events, after the early-morning middle distance. She almost dropped the bags she was carrying when the white figure flew over a bar level with her own forehead. She was tall, that much was clear, her limbs thin and long even in the company of competitors of similar stature. Laura couldn't tell who she was representing; her crop and full-length tights were both plain white, only interrupted by thin black stripes down their sides, and the competitor number pinned to her chest. Next to the girls in more obvious school uniforms, she looked professional.

"Wilson?" the teacher was saying, and Laura snapped back into herself. "Caitlin's lost her spike bag and she needs to start warming up for two hundred heats. Would you help her?"

"That's what I'm here for," Laura replied.

And it was. Today she was the captain of Team Cheering From The Sidelines. She'd woken early to put red paint over half her face and pin on the wonky crimson wig she found at a dollar store. _Anything to get a day off school_. That was why people assumed she'd begged her way here, at least. In truth it wasn't just that. There was something about seeing people run as fast, and jump or throw as far as possible; the exertion, the excitement, the feats they managed. Something Laura just wanted to witness. It was the same feeling she got wandering into an art store, where for the few inspired minutes spent wandering its aisles she could believe she was going to paint something great herself. Watching the athletes helped her imagine a world in which she too could reach such peaks.

It took some time to figure out that Caitlin had put her spike bag in her larger gym bag and forgotten she'd done it, rather than leaving it anywhere along the way into the venue. Laura went with her towards marshalling on the far side of the stadium, went as far as the mouth of the entry tunnel then wished her classmate luck, threw in an excited whoop as Caitlin disappeared into the crowd of athletes fixing their shoes and stretching and bouncing on their toes.

This vantage point was closer to the high jump stand the girl in white was competing at. Now at ground level instead of looking down from an elevated seat it was easy to see that the bar was well above Laura's head. A dark-haired competitor in blue ran full-pelt (at least, for Laura that pace would have been full-pelt) towards the bar but seemed to misstep just shy of her takeoff, and collected the bar with her shoulder, landing awkwardly on top of it on the mat. Laura winced. It was easy to get complacent about how hard something like this was when you only saw it done by the people who were really good at it. Seeing the mistakes reminded Laura why she was here to watch, instead of to try her own hand at flying.

Still, despite all reasonable assessment of her own ability, she itched to walk out there and _try_.

The high jumpers were dwindling by the time Laura made it back around to her school's setup in the stands. The girl in white, a girl in yellow, and one in grey and black stripes remained. Laura watched, transfixed, as the officials raised the bar another increment. By then, it was above the heads of all three competitors. The girl in white went first, soaring over the bar like she was just lying down midair, just taking a rest. The girl in yellow scraped her way over and the bar which, still in place as she hit the mat, wobbled violently before falling a split second later. Laura heard the dismay of the crowd around her. The girl in stripes felled the bar with a shoulder and walked away with a grimace visible from the stands.

"Laura, I need you to run this over to Leo," the teacher handed her a drink bottle. "He's warming up outside."

Laura did as she was told.

When she came back the girl in stripes was gone and the girl in yellow was sitting to the side pulling off her shoes. The girl in white took a jump. The bar fell. It must have been her last attempt, because the officials started packing up. Laura felt a little pang of disappointment at not getting to watch any more.

She looked at the program: seventeen years high jump. She watched the board until the results appeared. In first place: Rigby, E. Laura let the name sink into her mind and hoped the girl had other events today too, wanted a second chance to watch her work her magic.

It was later, at the start of the ninety hurdles, that Laura spotted her again, lining up behind lane six, jumping so her knees almost met her chest in warm-up.

Zahid, who humoured Laura and also enjoyed face paint, had come back from his triple jump event with a win, and was pulling on his totally-not-school-regulation purple track suit pants a couple of seats across from where Laura was hanging around.

"Have you heard of someone called Rigby?" she asked him. He seemed to know a lot of the athletic crowd, having been to his fair share of meets.

"Rigby? Do you mean Eleanor Rigby?"

Laura frowned. "The song? No, I mean the girl who won the high jump earlier. She's in the next race."

Zahid looked to the starting line with narrowed eyes. "Ahuh," he said, "that's Eleanor Rigby. Her parents were Beatles fans. We had good chats about Prince, too."

"So you know her?" Laura said, feeling the words growing closer together in her excitement and not caring if she sounded like a fool. "Do you know her _well_?"

Zahid raised a brow. "Sure, we trained together for a while. Long and triple."

"Could you introduce us?" Laura hesitated, "I mean, if we were to run into her or something like—"

"Oh, you've got a crush," Zahid grinned. "A crush from afar—you're starstruck, christ, Ellie'll have a field day with this."

"You think she'd like me?"

Zahid laughed. "I didn't say that—although she probably would, cute as you are. She'd eat you alive either way."

Laura looked at the pale figure now second in line as the first heat raced up the strait. "I could roll with that," she said, playing it as cool as was possible at that point in the conversation.

As the second heat went off and Eleanor stepped up to the blocks, Laura chanced to look away just long enough to see nerves on Zahid's face. He wasn't the kind of guy who got particularly nervous before his _own_ events, so it struck Laura as odd.

"Why do you look afraid for her?" she asked.

Zahid was quiet for a moment. "It's all or nothing, with Ellie," he said at last. "Have you ever done hurdles?"

Laura let out a little laugh at the memory that came to mind—of nervously edging her way up to far smaller hurdles than the ones which presently lined the track, then leaping as high as she could to make absolutely sure she didn't hit anything and fall in a heap of metal and wood and uncoordinated limbs.

"I've tried to," she answered.

"Well, when you want to be the best at hurdles, you have to fly closest to the sun. Clear the jumps with as little wastage as possible. Ellie will either glide over those hurdles by a hair's breadth, or she... won't."

The starter called _set_ and, as one, Eleanor's heat rose in their blocks. The gun followed a tense second later, and Laura swore that the flash of white was streaking ahead even before the runners had properly raised their heads. She saw what Zahid meant about cutting the jumps fine; the runners who were leading all ran across the tops of the hurdles more than they actually jumped them. Eleanor was a solid stride ahead of the rest at the third hurdle when it all went wrong.

It wasn't like the proverbial trainwreck, where the fall is clearly inevitable and it happens in terrible slow motion. By the time Laura realised what was happening, Eleanor's fourth hurdle had been flattened and she was sprawling out over the tartan, skidding what looked like an awfully long way across the surface. The rest of the crowd had drawn the same sharp horrified breath as Laura, and was now letting it out on a note of sympathy.

Eleanor went to get up, but the process was slow enough that every other girl had made the finish by the time she found her feet. She wandered (though she walked with a distinct tenderness she still managed to affect a careless swagger, Laura thought) up to the next hurdle and kicked it down, stepped over it where it lay, and proceeded to do the same thing until she'd crossed the line too.

Once there, she held her arms out and turned to the crowd for a moment before stalking off to the nearest tunnel exit. The crowd, who'd usually cheer unreservedly for someone getting up and finishing a race after such a fall, seemed confused about how to respond to Eleanor's particular brand of attitude. _I don't need your pity_ , she seemed to say _, but I demand your attention anyway_. Less a victim, more a martyr. _If I can't have the gold then I'll at least steal the spotlight._

"It's like you _knew_ that would happen!" Laura turned to Zahid, whose face still showed signs of worry, though none of shock.

"How could I have _known_ , Laura?" he replied. "I just know how Ellie races, that's all. It's statistics."

"Wilson!" a voice interrupted. "Run this down to Khasi at that pack start over there—see where I'm pointing? Silly girl assumed they were drawing on leg numbers for the walkers today and didn't even think to come to me for her extra patch before she ran off to warm up." Laura was handed a square sticker with the number nine printed on it. "You'd better run, Wilson. Get to her before she starts to panic about it. Take some safety pins too; I wouldn't trust the sticker to stay on those tiny shorts."

Once again finding herself jogging around the outside of the stadium, Laura began to wonder whether maybe she could actually go in for one of the middle distance events in future. The day's various errands felt like good enough training. It was quiet around the far side of the track; fewer athletes warming up now that the majority of the day's events were done. Laura did notice one person, though, sitting across the pathway with a long leg stretched out in front of her while her hands wrapped it with a bandage. There was a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, which was adjusted every so often when one of her busy hands could be spared.

Up close Eleanor looked both different and the same as Laura had imagined. She looked rough, with a graze running right down the left side of her body, face and all. Red striped either side of her eye—cheek and forehead—and painted its way down her forearm to her elbow, which was already bandaged. Blood mixed with tartan-track red to stain the white elastic of her clothes. She looked more like the others, now, Laura observed, with their war paint. At the same time she looked impossibly smooth, sleek, tall.

Laura would practically have to step over her on her way to find Khasi.

Suddenly Laura didn't want to find Khasi at all.

She'd never be allowed to come to carnivals again if Khasi's race started without her number being delivered... and yet. Why pass up the very thing she came for just so she could hold on to the chance to attempt to find it again, maybe, someday, in a year or so's time?

"Hey," she said, when she arrived in front of Eleanor.

Eleanor looked up, raised an eyebrow and stared at Laura like she was waiting to see if she'd run off again, flustered, intimidated. It might have worked on someone with a better sense of self-preservation, Laura thought, the Zahid-voice in her head offering its affectionately despairing commentary.

"Shouldn't you go to the first aid tent or something?" Laura asked, when she couldn't think of anything else to say.

"What for? I came prepared." Eleanor didn't look up as she spoke, attention still on her knee as she finished fixing the cloth to it.

Laura persisted. "My friend told me about you. Zahid— Zahid Inanna—"

That caught Ellie's attention. "He _told you about me_ , huh?" she muttered, the cigarette wedged between her lips shaking. "He always did like to share his sexual exploits with as many people as possible."

Laura felt her jaw drop open and hang there in disbelief. "Zahid— you— he—"

Eleanor's eyebrows rose. "Oh. He actually _didn't_ tell you," she said, fingers taking hold of the cigarette so as to make more room in her mouth for the words. "Well, you're free to have whatever fun you like with that information."

Something in her tone seemed to suggest that whatever had happened between Eleanor and Zahid was worth picturing. Laura could feel herself blushing. Zahid was a friend, a cute friend, a cute friend with whom Laura had an ongoing flirtation. And then Eleanor was... well, Laura found easily enough that she _wanted_ to imagine them together.

She eyed the ground steadily while attempting to dispel the images (stash them away for later at best) and when she'd reined her imagination in she looked back up only to find Eleanor giving her a quick, knowing wink.

"Sit down. What's your name?"

"Laura."

"Did you enjoy my race, Laura?"

Laura didn't know what the honest answer was. "It was something," she said.

Ellie laughed, a low sound, took a deep drag from her cigarette and blew it out leisurely.

"Zahid said you fall like that often," Laura ventured.

"About as often as I fly."

"How do you keep coming back and racing the same way when you know what's likely to happen?"

Eleanor eyed her. "A slightly more philosophical question than I'm usually asked," she said. "Hurdles—and the high jump too, for that matter—they're all about where your head's at. The running, jumping, landing—that's all simple enough. A matter of training in the right motions and going through them on competition day. But the moment you start thinking about what'll happen if it all goes wrong... _that's_ the moment it all goes wrong."

"So you have to block out all thought of consequences?"

With a half-thought, Laura tucked Khasi's patch into the pocket of her jacket.

Eleanor smiled. "No. You have to _own_ the probability of those consequences. They're part of it. You have to jump knowing that if you're going to fall, you're going to do it just the same way as you've made your approach: at top speed. Nothing held back. Hard."

"Go hard or go home," Laura muttered.

"Essentially."

"You're not worried you'll, you know, injure yourself? Badly enough that you have to stop racing?"

"So then what, I'll never make it to the Olympics? Laura, I hate to break it to you, but that's not really on the cards for any of us here, no matter how good we are. We graduate in a couple of years and a thousand other things eat up our time. We cut our training hours to work. Our friends quit, and we run out of meets to go to to make it all worthwhile. We discover we're not good enough to _really_ pursue athletics. Those of us who try are swiftly dispatched by a ruined knee or two. Once in a blue moon someone defies the rule, but it's not going to be me. And if my expiry date is looming anyway, so why shouldn't I leave everything I have out on the track now?"

"You can't really be as doomed as that. That's a terrible thought."

"Terrible is hardly the opposite of true. Anyway, long jump marshalling starts in five. Better not be late or they'll think I've pulled out."

"Are you sure you'll be alright?" Laura asked. Jumping into sand sounded like the last thing a person should do with a body covered in raw wounds.

Ellie smiled, stubbed out her cigarette and dropped it next to her socked foot. She picked up her spikes by the laces and they swung around dangerously. "I'm not here to be alright," she said. "I'm here to throw myself into that pit with everything I've got."

"Can I wish you luck anyway?" Laura asked, feeling vaguely stupid.

Ellie reeled in her swinging shoes and stepped in closer to Laura. (So tall, Laura thought. So tall up this close. Very close.)

"You're a curious one," she said, and her free hand reached out to tip Laura's chin up, connecting their lines of sight. Laura held Ellie's eyes and saw what was coming before it did. "If you must, I'll accept good luck kisses."

Laura leaned up, leaned in. Her hands flailed briefly, unsure of where they could be placed without touching one graze or another, before settling lightly on Ellie's hips over her tights. Eleanor kissed like she raced—hard and insistent and self-indulgent. It was quick, but more than long enough for Laura to feel herself spinning, falling, not caring how or whether she landed.

And then Ellie was on her way, already turning her back by the time Laura's eyes drifted open again.

"You should tell our friend Zahid to kindly pass on my number," she called over her shoulder. "And get back to your seat; I suspect this last event will be one not to be missed."

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on [tumblr](http://henrymercury.tumblr.com/).


End file.
